-girish jalihal

the fappening

“The burden of originality is one that most people don’t want to accept. They’d rather sit in front of the TV and let that tell them what they’re supposed to like, what they’re supposed to buy, and what they’re supposed to laugh at.”
-Marilyn Manson
I cannot stress upon how true these words are. That media is a mighty influence on our daily behaviour is undeniable but how good is this influence really? Are reality or talk shows doing us any good? What good are these news channels that sensationalise every event? You have to understand that media just sways with the wind, giving us exactly what we want, conforming to the popular opinion (or maybe creating them now?) and is heavily critical of any opposing views. The iCloud hack incident aka ‘The Fappening’ highlights this very clearly. Almost every magazine page that I have ‘liked’ on Facebook almost always post something along the lines of: ‘XXXX suffered a wardrobe malfunction leaving very little to our imagination! Click here to read the full article and also the full picture’
These same magazines however took a complete U-turn after the Fappening posting stuff like ‘Sick perverted hackers leak celebrity nudes! Disgusting act that goes to show how we take their privacy for granted!’
See what I mean? Stick to the popular opinion. You acquire more customers that way. It doesn’t matter if it refutes everything you’ve done but hey just stick to the popular opinion and you’re fine. Goes to show hypocritical the media really is.
Besides, if you think about it who was it that was truly responsible for the Fappening? I think a major chunk of the blame should go to the media which has taught us to treat celebrities as some sort of Demi-Gods. The media basically created the celebritarian culture which is the only thing that can explain why someone would bother leaking celebrity nudes when there are millions of women online who show their naked bodies off willingly.

‘America loves its victims’ said Marilyn. How true. It’s one of the best and most popular of his quotes. Do the talk shows who ‘sympathise’ with victims of hate crimes really care about them in actuality? Do those audiences that you always see on TV crying thanks to some teenagers sob story really feel for them or are they paid to do it? Is media using the tag of ‘helpless innocent victim’ to really create awareness or just to increase their TRPs?even if they’re so truly moved by Victims then why publicise them to the point where they become celebrities? For what? For having been attacked by somebody? Do victims really need to be put on top of a pedestal? Barring a few exceptional cases which are inspirational stories of how people fought back in the face of crisis, the rest of these victimised Demi-Gods don’t really deserve anything but sympathy

By portraying victims as role models all media does is propagate the victimhood complex.

“We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves.”
-Marilyn Manson